PSC 142 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Learned Helplessness, Stereotype Threat
Achievement
● Mastery motivation - an inborn motive to explore, understand, & control one’s
environment
● Achievement motivation - a willingness to strive to succeed at challenging tasks & to
meet high standards of accomplishment
● Need for achievement (n Ach) - McClelland's depiction of achievement motivation as a
learned motive to compete & to strive for success in situations in which one’s
performance can be evaluated against some standard of excellence
● Intrinsic orientation - a desire to achieve in order to satisfy one’s personal needs for
competence or mastery
● Extrinsic orientation - a desire to achieve in order to earn external incentive such as
grades, prizes, or the approval of others
● Motive to achieve success (Ms) - Atkinson’s term for the disposition describing one’s
tendency to approach challenging tasks & take pride in mastering them; analogous to
McClelland’s need for achievement
● Motive to avoid failure (Mf) - Atkinson’s term for the disposition describing one’s
tendency to shy away from challenging tasks so as to avoid the embarrassment of failing
● Achievement value - perceived value of attaining a particular goal should one strive to
achieve it
● Achievement expectancies - cognitive expectations of succeeding or failing at a
particular achievement - related activity
● Causal attributions - conclusions drawn about the underlying causes of one’s own or
another person’s behavior
● Locus of control - personality dimension distinguishing people who assume that they are
personally responsible for their life outcomes (internal locus) from those who believe that
their outcomes depend more on circumstances beyond their control ( external locus)
● Incremental view of ability - belief that one’s ability can be improved through increased
effort & practice
● Entity view of ability - belief that one’s ability is a highly stable trait that is not influenced
musch by effort or practice
● Mastery orientation - a tendency to persist at challenging tasks because of a belief that
one has the ability to succeed and/ or that earlier failure can be overcome by trying
harder
● Learned helplessness orientation - a tendency to give up or to stop trying after failing
because these failure have been attributed to a lack of ability that one can do little about
● Attribution retraining - therapeutic intervention in which helpless children are persuaded
to attribute failures to their lack of effort rather than a lack of ability
● Person (or trait) praise - praise focusing on desirable personality traits such as
intelligence; this praise fosters performance goals in achievement contexts
● Performance goal - state of affairs in which one’s primary objective in an achievement
context is to display one’s competencies (or to avoid looking incompetent)
● Process praise - praise of effort expended to formulate good ideas & effective problem -
solving strategies; this praise fosters learning goals in achievement contexts
